In the last month, motivated by having to stay indoors due to the "polar blast" blizzard of mid-January, I started to clear out a wealth of old files -- ancient tax returns, a massive number of expired resumes, applications for graduate schools never attended, committee minutes for groups I haven't worked with in two decades, expired travel maps and tour books, bank and credit statements from far in the past -- that I've carried accumulated and carried around with me since the mid-1980's. I've always been a bit of a pack-rat, having a basic paranoia that 'if I don't keep a copy, I'll want it someday and not have it'. But I finally realized it was time to reduce, reorganize and recycle, which has felt like an enormous burden lifted from my shoulders.
I ended up with 20 bags of shredded documents, plus another 12 file boxes filled to the brim of materials that didn't need to be shredded. I now have a mountain of empty file boxes in my basement and a massive number of empty hanging file holders and manila file folders, enough that I won't need to purchase any more for a very long time. At first it felt a bit painful, in that I was admitting that certain events and paths were now closed, that the 'time for investing in those paths' had passed. My therapist suggested that I might view the whole exercise as a process of preparing for the next phase of my life, going from one period of growth and change to another. I like that perspective.
The idea of "recycling a life" is from a concept that I coined in reference to the estate sales I like to attend, that when you're viewing and purchasing items from someone else's life, you are participating in recycling their life (or at least their former possessions). I've gone to enough estate sales over the years and accumulated enough 'stuff' that many of my good friends laugh that they want to make sure to be invited to my estate sale, when I pass from this plane of existence.
Hence, although I've successfully discarded a lot of paper files, I still have a wealth of items from my 'collections' that I have no wish to part with. I very definitely have more books, music albums, videos, etc. than I can possibly read, listen to, or view for the remainder of my life, and yet that doesn't stop me from desiring more (I've written about that before, in past blogs, in discussing the 'addiction of accumulation').
Still, throwing out all those paper files was profoundly freeing. I carefully went through them and definitely kept some files and documents that related to either academic interests, nonprofit foci, or sentimental value, and now need to take the time to file those in a much more 'ordered' fashion, so I can access them when the need arises (not doing so will simply result in having just the kind of scattered boxes and file cabinets I just discarded, where I had no idea where anything of value really was). One of the 'feelings' that arose in the process of deciding what to discard/recycle and what to retain was remembering 'the paths chosen and the paths not taken'. There were surely a lot of paths that I dearly wanted to take over the years, that at the time seemed "like the way to go", that even now, looking back, felt like they would have 'been better choices'. But what is important is that I didn't take those paths and instead, for a variety of reasons, took other paths. At any point in our lives, literally at any 'moment', we have a multiple number of choices available to us -- walk in this direction or that, agree to this, read that, eat this food, go to that event, take this medicine, come to this realization, employ a different perspective, etc.
Given the profound abuse I experienced as a child and youth and the way in which that abuse was predicated on twisting my sense of self to whatever viewpoint my abusers were motivated to perpetrate at any moment, I have tried, in the process of my emotional and mental health healing, to live, as much as possible, a conscious life. I try to think about why I engage in whatever activities I engage in, why I behave the way I do at any particular moment, etc. Of course, I don't always succeed in living as consciously as I want to, and even if I'm trying with all my heart, since my perspectives change over time and new information enters my life that I previously had no access to -- wherever you go, there you are -- what 'living consciously' looks like changes with the accumulation of chronology. Partly it's motivated by accumulated wisdom, partly by healing, partly by physical breakdown and pain, partly by love, respect and caring for self and others. 'Being conscious' changes over time, just as we change as individuals. But I attempt to engage in that walking meditation continuously, to the extent that I am conscious of the path I've chosen, at any given moment.
In recent years, I've successfully manifested a mutually loving. intimate and respectful heterosexual relationship, built a resonant and respectful life within my faith community, continued to maintain and develop a men's wellness nonprofit (as well as periodically write these blogs), delighted in having a very full cultural life for very little monetary outlay (due to ushering), kept my health at a moderately positive level, and continued to work, diligently, on healing from the profound childhood sexual abuse and physical torture that left a lasting, very nearly tragic impression on my life. Somehow, with the assistance and guidance of some quite competent and caring mental health professionals, I managed to take a potentially devastating upbringing to a 'higher level' of growth and healing, managed to walk the path of positive change. It hasn't been easy, and often has been painfully difficult, but I've done it. And managed, via my blogs, MMWI website, and periodic men's support group classes, to assist other male sexual and physical abuse survivors with their healing. That is a positive summation of the recycling of my own life.
My therapist was recently quoting a book he was reading wherein the author was speculating that the paths we chose in life eventually assist us in manifesting our 'life purpose'. The author's perspective was that often, at any moment, it isn't the least bit clear what that life purpose is, or where it is leading us to, but the accumulation of it all eventually allows us to become clear, as we grow into our humanity, about where we were 'meant to be', about who we were becoming. You might simply say that's a metaphysical rendering of 'fate', but my point (or at least the way in which I agree with that perspective) is that fate isn't foreordained, we are very much a participant in the formulation of our growth and change, if we maintain a conscious self-concept.
Critical to all this is the necessity to "be centered in the self" [as opposed to being "self-centered", which is about not being centered in self, but rather manipulating others to fulfill one's personal desires]. That was a difficult concept for me to find in my life, since for so very long I had no sense of a 'center', of a 'definite personhood' that was Donald. Boundaries are something that I had to develop, along with 'love', 'self-respect', 'self-value', and 'a solid known sense-of-self' whole cloth, from almost nothing as a starting point. The abuse tore away and crushed any self-contained, solid and known boundaries, and therefore, as an adult, I had to manifest those anew. My intent here is to note that while this was my personal experience, it is also the experience of many survivors of profound abuse [sexual, warfare, PTSD, physical, emotional, etc.] I chose the paths I chose because I often felt, at the time, like there was no other 'safe' choice to make at that time, that I only had access to a very few set of choices. Whether that was 'objectively' accurate really matters little; we all live within the limitations of the worldview that we are, first, given by others as children, and then, in a positive sense, grow into as adults (assuming we have sufficient support to grow into adulthood). The paths we chose -- and the point here is that we DO choose the paths we take, even if it doesn't appear to be the case when we take a path -- often felt out of our control, and yet eventually those choices lead us to become the kind of person that helps us in the fulfillment of our life purpose.
I'm surely not saying that that 'purpose' is alway so easily reached or attained. Nor am I saying that it's always a positive ultimacy. But if we maintain, to the extent possible, a conscious life, we have at least a better chance of coming to a 'sense-of-self' that leads to passionate fulfillment. No guarantees, ever. But living consciously at least increases those possibilities.
Hence, in the process of "recycling a life", and reorganizing it in a more consciously logical manner (with ample allowance for non-logical feelings), I am slowly, albeit with stumbles at times, moving in the direction that feels and seems, in my heart, to be the place I need to go to grow and heal. That's a positive outcome to a distinctly dysfunctional childhood.
